States gear up to work on AI
Startup policy outlook under second Trump term
Executive coaching should be accessible to anyone who is interested, but oftentimes scaling the education is not practical. With her company Zella Life, co-founder Remy Meraz is democratizing professional development using AI. We sat down with her to discuss AI, independent contractors, and more.
After working in the financial sector for over 20 years, Mical Jeanlys-White founded her own company, WealthMore, a wealth tech with a focus on tackling a key financial barrier—wealth building and management. Her company leverages technology to connect everyday Americans with accessible wealth management services, aiming to provide wealth creation for all. We sat down with her to discuss her journey in raising capital, navigating tax policy, the evolving role of AI, and more.
Vance Reavie is no stranger to entrepreneurship. Using his knowledge from previous ventures, he created an AI platform that intelligently automates manual marketing and merchandising workflows and content generation processes for brands and retailers. We sat down with Vance to discuss the startup ecosystem in Arkansas, AI policy and regulation, grant opportunities, and more.
Modgarden is on a mission to provide city residents with an opportunity to take control of the way their food is grown. After food cured his own illnesses, Founder and CEO Aamar Khwaja wanted to find a way for everyone to access organic, healthy food, and built tinyFarm. We spoke to him about his background on Wall Street, the unique difficulties he faces with a hardware company, and his goals for Modgarden.
The Big Story: Congress digs into recent bank failures. This week, committees in both chambers held hearings to examine recent bank failures, including the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)—a key financial institution in the startup ecosystem. The collapse of SVB in particular devastated many across the innovation ecosystem, sending companies scrambling to withdraw funds and make payroll, uncertain if their full balances would be secured.
Mavity offers businesses a unique chance to find and hire a dream team of creative professionals at a fraction of the traditional cost and time. We talked to Co-Founder and CEO Tomás Uribe about his Colombian background, his experience within the U.S. immigration system, and the impact of having an international employment structure.
The Big Story: The difficulties of content moderation and the chance to try it yourself. Critics of the Internet industry, including policymakers, frequently complain about content moderation decisions and propose legislative changes that would make it harder for Internet companies to host, remove, demote, amplify, and curate user content. To help inform those conversations, Engine worked with Copia and Leveraged Play to develop a new video game this week—Moderator Mayhem—with the goal of highlighting the difficulties and the inherent tradeoffs Internet companies, especially startups, face while navigating moderating their users’ content.
Data privacy has long been top of mind for policymakers, but in the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy framework, states have been passing their own unique privacy laws. That’s created pressure on policymakers in Washington to create national rules. When policymakers think about writing new rules for how companies can interact with consumer data, they often have only the practices of bad actors or the largest Internet companies in mind.
Fabio Caironi is the Founder & CEO of ByteNite, a company that specializes in making computing more affordable and powerful by distributing the task of data encoding. ByteNite enables users to join their distributed network of personal computing devices to earn rewards for the use of their computing power to process and store data. In addition to learning about how he thinks about issues of data privacy, we spoke with Fabio more about the company he’s building and his firsthand experience navigating the complex U.S. immigration system.
We’ve worked with Copia and Leveraged Play to launch Moderator Mayhem, a video game that has players navigate the inherent tradeoffs around content moderation.
The Big Story: “Children’s safety” push for more data collection, content scanning. Lawmakers reintroduced and advanced legislation that would push Internet companies of all types and sizes to collect more data from their users and scan public and private user content in the name of childrens’ safety. The bills—including the Kids Online Safety Act, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, which were reintroduced this week, and the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act, which advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week—would remake the regulatory framework that enables startups to grow and succeed.
The Big Story: Over 65 startups call for uniform federal privacy law. This week, startups are calling on Congress to pass a federal privacy law that takes the startup ecosystem into account. A coalition of startups and support organizations across 26 states sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to pass a law that creates uniformity, promotes clarity, limits bad faith litigation, accounts for the resources of startups, and recognizes the interconnectedness of the startup ecosystem. The letter comes as states continue to enact their own unique data privacy laws, and as a Congressional committee explored the problems posed by a sectoral federal privacy landscape in a hearing this week.
With an academic and entrepreneurial background in the sciences, Utopic Ventures Founder and General Partner Neil Thanedar seeks to provide pre-seed capital to an underserved segment of the innovation ecosystem: scientist-run startups. We spoke with Neil about his passion for scientific and deep-tech companies, the impact of the accredited investor definition on the investing world, and his desire to make Michigan the next tech hub.
The Big Story: Non-compete ban would boost the startup ecosystem. Policymakers received thousands of comments this week as a key agency considers a change that would make it easier for people to leave their jobs, including to found and join early stage startups. In conjunction with the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic, Engine submitted comments this week to the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to move forward with a proposed rule change that would ban most non-compete agreements, which are post-employment contracts that bar workers from taking up jobs with competitors for a prescribed period of time.
100 percent-disabled veteran Dr. Ahmad Glover had a goal of developing touchless wireless power networking technologies that would recharge devices and provide power the same way that we get WiFi: over the air. We spoke with Dr. Glover about his unique experience with the U.S. innovation ecosystem, the importance of telecom and power in rural areas, and how policymakers should think about spectrum selloff and prioritizing
Engine is a non-profit technology policy, research, and advocacy organization that bridges the gap between policymakers and startups. Engine works with government and a community of thousands of high-technology, growth-oriented startups across the nation to support the development of technology entrepreneurship through economic research, policy analysis, and advocacy on local and national issues. Engine appreciates the opportunity to submit this response to the Federal Trade Commission’s request for comment on the Commission’s notice of proposed rulemaking banning most non-compete clauses in employment contracts.
The Big Story: Policymakers set their sights on artificial intelligence. This week saw a frenzy of activity from policymakers around the globe looking to regulate artificial intelligence technologies, which startups are increasingly leveraging in their products. In the U.S., federal agencies recently kicked off processes to examine AI and intellectual property as well as AI accountability, while Congress is exploring legislation. Abroad, policymakers have used existing regulations to ban certain AI tools and are looking to adapt their proposed AI rules.
Innovare is an education technology company that aims to enable improvement throughout educational communities through the use of education management software and good data. The company’s platform helps educators centralize and analyze student data in order to guide better, data-driven decisions in the classroom. We spoke with AJ DeLeón, Co-Founder and CEO of Innovare, to learn more about his platform, his experience navigating various data privacy regimes—including why he favors a uniform, federal privacy standard, and his experience raising the capital necessary to build Innovare.
The Big Story: States continue adding to tech regulatory landscape risking additional burdens for startups. State legislative sessions are in high gear this spring, advancing tech legislation and threatening to grow a patchwork of varying rules startups must navigate as they grow. This week, for example, the Washington Senate passed a bill governing health information and other personal data. Their effort joins several other states putting forward proposals aimed at privacy and data security, online safety, and content moderation—that each will have noticeable ripple effects for startups.
Zinnia Founder & CEO Lauren Marturano founded her company with the goal of making offsite corporate planning a seamless process by simplifying travel and agenda planning for groups. We spoke with her about her experiences as a woman founder fundraising and building a product, the importance of startup accelerators, and how it’s been navigating data privacy issues.
The Big Story: R&D tax credit changes create tax bill for startups. Startups and other companies are facing higher taxes this year after a provision from a 2017 tax law went into effect recently. The law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), triggers a change to how the research and development (R&D) tax credit operates. Unless policymakers step in, startups and small businesses will have to weather the blow to their cash flow and may consider limiting future R&D costs. This could ultimately result in an overall reduction in innovation in the U.S., slowed economic growth, and decreased ability for our innovation ecosystem to compete with other countries.
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